DESCRIPTION

Reads the supplied diff output (i.e. "a patch") and applies it to files.
With the --index option the patch is also applied to the index, and
with the --cached option the patch is only applied to the index.
Without these options, the command applies the patch only to files,
and does not require them to be in a Git repository.

This command applies the patch but does not create a commit. Use
git-am[1] to create commits from patches generated by
git-format-patch[1] and/or received by email.

OPTIONS

<patch>…

The files to read the patch from. - can be used to read
from the standard input.

--stat

Instead of applying the patch, output diffstat for the
input. Turns off "apply".

--numstat

Similar to --stat, but shows the number of added and
deleted lines in decimal notation and the pathname without
abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For
binary files, outputs two - instead of saying
0 0. Turns off "apply".

--summary

Instead of applying the patch, output a condensed
summary of information obtained from git diff extended
headers, such as creations, renames and mode changes.
Turns off "apply".

--check

Instead of applying the patch, see if the patch is
applicable to the current working tree and/or the index
file and detects errors. Turns off "apply".

--index

When --check is in effect, or when applying the patch
(which is the default when none of the options that
disables it is in effect), make sure the patch is
applicable to what the current index file records. If
the file to be patched in the working tree is not
up-to-date, it is flagged as an error. This flag also
causes the index file to be updated.

--cached

Apply a patch without touching the working tree. Instead take the
cached data, apply the patch, and store the result in the index
without using the working tree. This implies --index.

-3

--3way

When the patch does not apply cleanly, fall back on 3-way merge if
the patch records the identity of blobs it is supposed to apply to,
and we have those blobs available locally, possibly leaving the
conflict markers in the files in the working tree for the user to
resolve. This option implies the --index option, and is incompatible
with the --reject and the --cached options.

--build-fake-ancestor=<file>

Newer git diff output has embedded index information
for each blob to help identify the original version that
the patch applies to. When this flag is given, and if
the original versions of the blobs are available locally,
builds a temporary index containing those blobs.

When a pure mode change is encountered (which has no index information),
the information is read from the current index instead.

-R

--reverse

Apply the patch in reverse.

--reject

For atomicity, git apply by default fails the whole patch and
does not touch the working tree when some of the hunks
do not apply. This option makes it apply
the parts of the patch that are applicable, and leave the
rejected hunks in corresponding *.rej files.

-z

When --numstat has been given, do not munge pathnames,
but use a NUL-terminated machine-readable format.

Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF, double quotes,
and backslash characters replaced with \t, \n, \", and \\,
respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in double quotes if
any of those replacements occurred.

-p<n>

Remove <n> leading slashes from traditional diff paths. The
default is 1.

-C<n>

Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before
and after each change. When fewer lines of surrounding
context exist they all must match. By default no context is
ever ignored.

--unidiff-zero

By default, git apply expects that the patch being
applied is a unified diff with at least one line of context.
This provides good safety measures, but breaks down when
applying a diff generated with --unified=0. To bypass these
checks use --unidiff-zero.

Note, for the reasons stated above usage of context-free patches is
discouraged.

--apply

If you use any of the options marked "Turns off
apply" above, git apply reads and outputs the
requested information without actually applying the
patch. Give this flag after those flags to also apply
the patch.

--no-add

When applying a patch, ignore additions made by the
patch. This can be used to extract the common part between
two files by first running diff on them and applying
the result with this option, which would apply the
deletion part but not the addition part.

--allow-binary-replacement

--binary

Historically we did not allow binary patch applied
without an explicit permission from the user, and this
flag was the way to do so. Currently we always allow binary
patch application, so this is a no-op.

--exclude=<path-pattern>

Don’t apply changes to files matching the given path pattern. This can
be useful when importing patchsets, where you want to exclude certain
files or directories.

--include=<path-pattern>

Apply changes to files matching the given path pattern. This can
be useful when importing patchsets, where you want to include certain
files or directories.

When --exclude and --include patterns are used, they are examined in the
order they appear on the command line, and the first match determines if a
patch to each path is used. A patch to a path that does not match any
include/exclude pattern is used by default if there is no include pattern
on the command line, and ignored if there is any include pattern.

--ignore-space-change

--ignore-whitespace

When applying a patch, ignore changes in whitespace in context
lines if necessary.
Context lines will preserve their whitespace, and they will not
undergo whitespace fixing regardless of the value of the
--whitespace option. New lines will still be fixed, though.

--whitespace=<action>

When applying a patch, detect a new or modified line that has
whitespace errors. What are considered whitespace errors is
controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By default,
trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely consist of
whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately followed
by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line are
considered whitespace errors.

By default, the command outputs warning messages but applies the patch.
When git-apply is used for statistics and not applying a
patch, it defaults to nowarn.

You can use different <action> values to control this
behavior:

nowarn turns off the trailing whitespace warning.

warn outputs warnings for a few such errors, but applies the
patch as-is (default).

fix outputs warnings for a few such errors, and applies the
patch after fixing them (strip is a synonym --- the tool
used to consider only trailing whitespace characters as errors, and the
fix involved stripping them, but modern Gits do more).

error outputs warnings for a few such errors, and refuses
to apply the patch.

error-all is similar to error but shows all errors.

--inaccurate-eof

Under certain circumstances, some versions of diff do not correctly
detect a missing new-line at the end of the file. As a result, patches
created by such diff programs do not record incomplete lines
correctly. This option adds support for applying such patches by
working around this bug.

-v

--verbose

Report progress to stderr. By default, only a message about the
current patch being applied will be printed. This option will cause
additional information to be reported.

--recount

Do not trust the line counts in the hunk headers, but infer them
by inspecting the patch (e.g. after editing the patch without
adjusting the hunk headers appropriately).

--directory=<root>

Prepend <root> to all filenames. If a "-p" argument was also passed,
it is applied before prepending the new root.

For example, a patch that talks about updating a/git-gui.sh to b/git-gui.sh
can be applied to the file in the working tree modules/git-gui/git-gui.sh by
running git apply --directory=modules/git-gui.

Configuration

apply.ignorewhitespace

Set to change if you want changes in whitespace to be ignored by default.
Set to one of: no, none, never, false if you want changes in
whitespace to be significant.

apply.whitespace

When no --whitespace flag is given from the command
line, this configuration item is used as the default.

Submodules

If the patch contains any changes to submodules then git apply
treats these changes as follows.

If --index is specified (explicitly or implicitly), then the submodule
commits must match the index exactly for the patch to apply. If any
of the submodules are checked-out, then these check-outs are completely
ignored, i.e., they are not required to be up-to-date or clean and they
are not updated.

If --index is not specified, then the submodule commits in the patch
are ignored and only the absence or presence of the corresponding
subdirectory is checked and (if possible) updated.